Hoping someone has some advice/reassurance. My 5.5 year old is really fussy and it is seriously getting me down. I am a good cook and love food, he gets home cooked meals every day and 9 times out of 10 he won't eat them.
Under previous advice I recieved I keep putting things I know he won't eat on his plate (the wisdom seems to be you have to keep offering things and eventually they will try them), I don't make any fuss about him either eating or not eating, I don't do the rewards thing as I was advised not to, I don't offer alternatives. Again previous advice I received was to make sure his plate always has one thing I know he will definitely eat on it.
I've been doing these things for what seems like forever now and it doesn't seem to be making the blindest bit of difference. He's never been a big eater - even as a tiny baby he wasn't that fussed about milk. He's on the small side for weight for his age (though still following his line on the chart) and he takes a multivitamin but I just worry about lack of nutrients and his general complete refusal to even try new foods, even stuff I am 99% sure he would like. I involve him in cooking all the time which he enjoys but even if he's helped to cook it he still won't eat it.
He will eat:
Bread of any description - brown/white etc (but nothing with seeds)
Rice, pasta, and potatoes of any description unless they have any herbs on them. Will not touch sweet potato or butternut squash. With pasta he will only really eat fusilli or penne, he gets very suspicious of small shapes like macaroni.
for pasta sauces he'll have cheese sauce and tomato sauce (I do home made and usually try to put veg in that) on pasta but it has to be smooth, any lumps at all and he won't eat it
Cheese - cheddar only, he won't entertain trying any other cheese like feta or halloumi or even a babybel or a cheesestring
Fruit - he will eat pear, apple, mango, melon, strawberries, blueberries and nectarines
Vegetables - the major sticking point. The only one he willingly and regularly eats is cucumber. He will grudgingly eat red pepper, carrot and broccoli but only very small amounts. Apart from that - nothing.
Meat - chicken, occasionally a home made meatball, ham, sausage (we don't have the latter two much as I don't like to give him processed meat).
He'll eat yoghurt but only the petit filous sort, not plain greek or anything like that.
Crisps/chocolate/cake/sweets and so on - needless to say these aren't every day things but he's even fussy about these unlike most children - will only eat pom bears or tortilla chips for crisps, and only plain milk chocolate - like he wouldn't eat a cake with chocolate chips in it, it would have to be plain sponge. He has never tried a sweet (he's been offered one).
I've been repeatedly told he'll grow out of it but he's been like this since I weaned him and if anything he has got worse, not better.
Any advice I haven't tried?!?!